<![CDATA[Not every online seller competes on equal terms. A home-scale food producer with a good product but a neglected storefront is, in effect, competing against sellers with better photographs. This study asks how two very different kinds of seller signal - competence, expressed through digital marketing capability, and safety, expressed through product legal certification - reach the consumer, and whether they arrive through the same psychological door. We survey 100 consumers of Kacang Tore Kawangkoan, a traditional fried snack from Minahasa Regency, North Sulawesi, and estimate a partial least squares model. Trust turns out to matter more than either signal on its own. Digital marketing capability and product legal certification each raise customer trust, and trust is by a wide margin the strongest single predictor of repurchase intention (beta = 0.548). The two signals, though, do not reach loyalty in the same way. Digital marketing capability retains a small but significant direct effect on repurchase (beta = 0.168, p = 0.033), so trust only partly carries it. Product legal certification has no significant direct effect (beta = 0.092, p = 0.248); its entire contribution travels through trust. One signal opens the door, the other is read at the door, and only the first gets a consumer back inside. We discuss what this asymmetry implies for certification policy among micro, small and medium enterprises, and why displaying a certificate is not the same as communicating one. Keywords: Digital marketing capability; product legal certification; customer trust; repurchase intention; PLS-SEM; local food products]]>
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